5.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievably Profound!!! This is a GEM!! Buy it and buy it for others!!, February 1, 2012
This review is from: The Virtue in the Vice: Finding Seven Lively Virtues in the Seven Deadly Sins (Hardcover)
They say live a good life so when you're 80 you can look back on it and enjoy it a second time. I've had a very fun and pleasurable life but often it was overcast by incidents and tribulations where those months stayed under the shadow of an event or choice.
So I happened on this book randomly looking through vices, and found myself over the 2011/12 XMAS holidays embracing, I mean UNDERLINING every other paragraph, then rereading the chapter again. Then finishing the book and restarting it again enlightened and liberated. It is currently in possession by a close friend who is having the same reaction, while I'm in the process of ordering 10 copies to send out to friends and family. I have NEVER in 41 years done this for ANY book. I've tried to research more about the 7 virtues, and the other books just confuse the issue or go way to much into christian blind illogical ideology.
I am not very Christian, or agnostic, but there is so much truth in this book about the good way for living and pure way to bring your spirit in such a good place. It met my skeptical rationality, then opened up my mind. I've studied psychology, how to books, spirituality, attended workshops -- something about this book has made a profound, mature shift in how I view the world. It speaks of something sooo old that has somehow gotten so lost and mixed up in the last couple thousand years, since Artistotle first started writing theories of the golden mean of your spirit, since Tao started writing about the middle way. Something snapped - It isn't just the simplicity or the metaphors, or how easy it is to do, it's the fact that he takes you through all the vices as they would exist in every day realistic terms and you start to see it. And then, instead of condemning you for it, he provides a place for you to stand in that gives you power right in the middle to love and embrace a world. Extract you right out of the hell you are in. There is a reason why we go into the vices to begin with, by their draw and when stuck, make life VERY unbearable. Yet we stay in those day to day like a viscious circle condemening ourselves for them and especially condemning others, and yet not making an ounce of difference to the problem. Buddah contemplated these theories in the Middle way, Aristotle wrote about them in the golden mean, Mideveal church adopted them to further provide a path for people to get to vices, but nowadays we here it and dismiss it as greater than thou pontification. when you see it on a personal level, then you will begin to see it with your friends and the world - how the world goes to greed, rage, lust, gluttony, pride, sloth. What would your life look like if you stood and went for what was right, instead of being seduced by anger and war. What would the world look like if instead off clearcutting out of greed, it enjoyed more what it has.
buy this book, treasure it, then share it. It will change your world. Dr. Meyers, wherever you are, you're gifted. I wouldn't mind seeing your take on how to apply this very same on a town and community level. brent.bruning@gmail.com
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